


Be Kind, Rewind

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [20]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 80s AU, F/M, brief references to bad teenage decisions, gratuitous John Williams references, less reference to bad fashion decisions but believe me it's there, they work in a video rental store
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:07:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27902725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: Felix took the job at the video rental store to annoy his father. He kept the job at the video rental store because his coworker keeps singing increasingly absurd songs to the main theme from ET. He tells himself he'll quit his job at the video rental store when she wears the same color scrunchie two days in a row and things start getting boring.He's probably never going to quit.80s AU, written for the Felannie discord drabble challenge; this week's prompt was "Rewind."
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: Everyday I'm Drabbling [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649380
Comments: 19
Kudos: 54
Collections: Those Who Drabble in the Dark





	Be Kind, Rewind

“Indi- _ana_ , he solves crime! Indi- _ana_! All the time, time time!”

Felix was already resting his chin in his hand with a posture that would almost certainly incur a lecture from his father, but he tilted his head at an even more disjointed angle as he listened to Annette’s song. He recognized the tune, but he’d fallen asleep during Temple of Doom, or maybe had been making out with someone in the back row of the movie theater. That said, he was _pretty_ sure it wasn’t a movie about a detective. He’d remember that.

Annette didn’t appreciate this when he pointed it out to her.

“Wow, eavesdropping much?” she said, rolling her eyes as if he was the stupidest person she’d ever met. “And anyway, he’s fighting _Nazis_ , Felix. That definitely counts as crimefighting!”

She returned to her task of shelving returns with all the zeal of someone who had never been wrong in her entire life, her ponytail swinging dramatically behind her as she turned away from him.

“It’s not eavesdropping. I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to listen to,” Felix grumbled, but Annette pointedly ignored him, starting on a different John Williams tune with lyrics about a little alien friend who had far more laser powers than Felix remembered. He sighed and looked around the video rental store, so as to not be accused of staring as well as eavesdropping. Friday afternoons were evidently usually a busy time, but a college town like Garreg Mach was dead in the summer, so it had been crickets all day. Felix realized he was staring again. Annette’s scrunchie was neon yellow with black polka dots. He was pretty sure he hadn’t seen that one before. He kept a running tally; there was nothing else to do.

“Whatcha doing this weekend?” Annette asked. Her shelving task complete, she vaulted over the front counter – badly – and awkwardly landed next to Felix. He instinctively put out a hand (it wouldn’t be the first time she’d crashed into him somehow behind their relatively small front counter), but Annette didn’t seem to notice. She rifled under the counter for a magazine and began flipping through glossy pictures of prettier people than Felix.

Felix shrugged, even though Annette wasn’t looking. “I dunno, nothing fun,” he said morosely. “I think my old man wants me to go to some dinner at the governor’s mansion or something, so I have to think of a lie to get out of that.”

“I always forget you’re, like, totally rich,” Annette said, completely uninterested in Felix’s recently rediscovered wealth. “Why do you even work at this place, anyway?”

Felix frowned. His older brother had taken an internship his first summer after college, some fancy coffee boy for a law firm where his father knew the partners. Glenn had loved it. Felix suspected his dad had the same firm on speed dial for when he moved home that summer.

Felix had filled out the ratty application form at the worst video rental store he could find before he’d even unpacked his bags.

“My dad thinks it builds character, I guess,” he said finally. Annette rolled her eyes and flipped a page in the magazine.

“Gag me with a spoon,” she said sympathetically. She had one strand of hair falling out of her ponytail and landing across her ear. Felix knew better than to try to fix it.

His plan had been to drop the job a couple weeks in, just long enough that it would be too late to apply for anything else and he could spend the summer hiding in his room, as the goddess intended. But it was six weeks in and he just . . . hadn’t. It was mostly a terrible job; explaining twelve times in one day that they didn’t have a movie that released in theaters last week and getting into fights with obvious fourteen year olds when he carded them for trying to rent an R-rated movie.

But Annette was . . . something else. She instantly made friends with every 9-year-old child and ancient grandmother that came into the store. She knew the plot of every single movie – every. single. one. – and could give recommendations or help people track down what they were looking for based on the vaguest descriptions, even when her song lyrics almost never accurately described the plot.

And those songs. 

Felix never left a shift without some awful Williams blockbuster stuck in his head, and worse, he’d caught himself whistling the themes while shaving earlier that month. But he was sure it was the lyrics that made them stick, not the tunes. They made no sense, and his brain couldn’t stop trying to make them make sense. He couldn’t shake it, and the only way to get one song out of his head was to listen to Annette compose something even more ridiculous.

So he kept coming back to work for the variety, maybe. And to see how many scrunchies she owned. And because, in a city full of old friends he hated and old ghosts he hated more, no one would find him in the town’s worst video rental store.

The front bell clanged obnoxiously.

“Eyy, Felix. Hope I’m not keeping you from anything important.”

Almost no one would find him.

“What do you want, Sylvain,” Felix said. “I already told you that you can’t hide from girls in here.”

“You always think the worst of me,” Sylvain said, walking further into the store and giving Felix a wide, toothy smile. It got wider and toothier when he spotted Annette. “Not working a solo shift, I see! Have we met before, babe?”

“We were in homeroom together for 3 years in high school, Sylvain,” Annette said with too big of a smile. “Annette? Remember me?”

“Annette! Of course! Math genius,” Sylvain quickly corrected, sliding over to her. “That hairstyle looks _great_ on you, can I just say that?”

“Do you want a movie or something?” Felix interrupted, jerking his thumb towards the rows of display cases behind Sylvain. “They’re that way.”

Sylvain turned his attention back to Felix and adopted an expression of wide-eyed, syrupy innocence. “Yes, Felix, that’s exactly why I’m here,” he said, leaning towards Felix and resting his chin in his hand in an unintentional parody of Felix’s earlier posture. “Do you have _Sixteen Candles_? It’s Friday night so I have big plans to buy a pint of ice cream and cry at the ending.

“Of course we have that, what a good choice,” Annette broke in cheerfully. “Do you want to browse our selection or do you just want that one? You might find something else you haven’t seen before, you know!”

Sylvain gave her a look that was a mixture of pity and awe. “Goddess, you think I’m being serious,” he said. His face morphed into a smile that Felix wished he didn’t recognize so easily. “Molly Ringwald has a new movie out right now, right?” he asked, turning back to Annette. “I love her. We should go see it sometime. I’ll get us popcorn.”

“Sylvain,” Felix snapped, slamming his hand down on the counter. “What do you _want_?”

Sylvain’s eyes flickered between Annette and Felix rapidly, enough times that Felix knew he was not only sizing up the situation, but coming to some horrible and, in all likelihood, sickeningly accurate assessment of the situation. Sylvain had survived living in Garreg Mach his whole life by adopting a very particular persona of drunken layabout playboy, but Felix knew from painful experience that Sylvain’s actual fatal flaw was that he was too smart for his own good.

Whatever he concluded, it amused him more than Felix liked.

“Ingrid’s borrowing my car this weekend,” he said. “Her brother has the car for the week and she needs to drive to a meet in the upper territories.”

“Okay,” Felix said. He frankly didn’t care who had whose car over the weekend.

“So I need you to drive us to Hilda’s party tonight.”

“What.”

“Don’t worry; I don’t know what time you get off work but I don’t mind getting there late, you know that.”

“I’m not going to Hilda’s stupid party,” Felix said. He hadn’t seen Hilda since graduation, which he considered a victory. One time she asked to copy his homework for a class he was not taking.

Sylvain was utterly unfazed by Felix’s refusal. “Of course you are, you’re driving me,” he said, ever the logician. “And I promise not to swipe your keys leave you stranded this time, which is _quite_ the promise, I’ll have you know – Hilda’s got from friends visiting from AUU and let me tell you these girls are _knockouts_.”

“You’re not leaving me stranded because I’m not going,” said Felix, stubbornly. “I’m not spending a perfectly good Friday night with the worst people from high school just because you want to get shot down by some girls you’ll never see again.”

“Ah, I suppose you’d rather spend the evening having dinner with your father?” Sylvain said, raising his eyebrows skeptically. “I tried calling, and he told me you two had dinner plans with the Blaiddyds. Sounds dull to me, but if that’s how you want to spend your evening. Good old Rod _did_ seem excited that you had plans to see your old pal Sylvain, instead, though.”

“I hate you,” Felix muttered through gritted teeth.

Sylvain grinned, used to the insult. “For getting you out of another terrible dinner party? I’m a saint.” He swiped a candy bar from the front display rack and dug a couple dollar bills out of his pocket, throwing them down on the counter easily. “Pick me up at like nine or ten; I’ll see you then.”

Sylvain was almost out the door and of Felix’s hair before he suddenly remembered he had more ways to be annoying. He turned around and gave another toothy smile. “You should come too, Annie,” he said, winking at Annette, who had unconvincingly returned to her magazine as if she weren’t absorbing the entire conversation. “It’s no homecoming weekend but Hilda knows how to have fun. Felix can pick you up, as well. He’s got room, right Fe?”

He was out the door before either could answer, leaving a bell jangling merrily in his wake. A strained and awful silence filled the video rental store.

“I forgot you two were friends,” Annette finally said, flipping her magazine to a spread about low fat breakfast options.

“If you want to call it that,” Felix muttered. They settled into an uncomfortable silence, Annette absently sucking her teeth as she frowned at whatever the magazine told her would help her lose five pounds.

“Sorry he asked you,” Felix finally blurted out, not sure what he really wanted to apologize for but figuring he could start there. “You don’t have to come, obviously. I’m probably leaving early anyways. You know how awful these parties are.”

“I don’t, actually!” Annette said brightly. “I definitely never went to any of _Hilda’s_ parties in high school. Or college, I guess, but she doesn’t attend GMM, right? So that makes sense.”

“Oh. Did you know Hilda in high school?” Felix asked. He’d never had a class with Annette, and could only vaguely remember seeing her and her ubiquitous braided pigtails between classes. Evidently Sylvain had known her for years, though. Felix didn’t feel jealous of this, exactly, so much as he thought it was yet another way Sylvain wasted his lucky breaks.

“She was my gym partner in tenth grade, if you can believe that!” Annette said with a slight, unconvincing laugh. “Have you ever tried to return your own badminton serve? That was gym class with Hilda. She was nice, though! Convinced me to cut class with her one time, that was actually kind of fun. Only once, though!” Annette added with a horrified look in Felix’s direction, as if she’d just accidentally confessed to murder.

“A likely story, slacker,” Felix said, trying to hide a smirk.

Annette pouted at him, then returned to her magazine. “But we weren’t on, like, party terms,” she said. “And anyways, I’ve never really been the partying kind. Wasn’t my thing.”

“Ah. What was your thing?” Felix asked.

“You know. Marching band practice, that took up a lot of time. My best friend and I did crafting and baking Sundays. Spent a lot of time at the mall, not buying things,” Annette shrugged, as if she were detailing the most normal possible life, entirely full of things Felix had never even considered as options for an afternoon. “Watching _Sixteen Candles_ and eating ice cream,” she added to herself.

Felix heard it.

It probably wasn’t feasible to chase Sylvain down and punch him in the face. So instead Felix did the next stupidest item on his list of bad ideas.

“I can pick you up at nine if you want to come,” he said, steadfastly staring at a poster of Tom Cruise instead of Annette. “I mean, this party is going to suck, but it would suck way less if you were there.”

The pause was far too long before Annette finally answered, “You don’t have to do that, you know.”

“Yeah. No. I mean, yeah,” Felix said. “You don’t have to, either. I’d just rather spend the night with you than with Hilda, you know?”

He didn’t realize the innuendo until after he said it, but luckily, Annette didn’t seem to realize it at all.

Tom Cruise seemed to be laughing at him, though.

“Nine-thirty,” Annette said finally. “I don’t want to get there too early.”

“Deal,” Felix agreed. He vaguely wondered what color scrunchie she would wear, but was quickly distracted by the song she sang under her breath as she flipped through the magazine, which appeared to be about Jaws, the friendliest shark in all the sea.

**Author's Note:**

> I have absolutely no idea if Fodlan-esque theology and politics would imply a world without Top Gun, but frankly I don't want to imagine a world without Top Gun and it hurt to try, so let's just . . . not think too hard about the movie references. Maybe he flies wyverns instead of fighter jets, idk.
> 
> The Felannie Discord has 80s fever at the moment, I guess! I always follow trends. [Here's some cute art](https://twitter.com/halcyon_autumn/status/1335034429371273224) featuring that infamous scrunchie.
> 
> [You can also find me on twitter, if you'd like!](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


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